


The Stolen Crystal

by LibraryMage



Series: Leverage Rebels AU [3]
Category: Leverage, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Autistic Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 23:18:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10559376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: Parker has been carrying that stone around for years, never realizing what it was.





	

**Author's Note:**

> okay, this is kind of a "filler fic" but it bridges the gap between the first fic in the series and a later one

Parker slumped into a seat, pulling her knees up to her chest, her limbs loose and floppy, her eyes half-shut.

“Parker?” Sophie asked, gently nudging the blonde girl’s arm.  Parker jumped a little.  Her touch felt like a jolt of electricity.  “Are you alright?”

Parker shrugged, shook her head, paused for a second, then nodded.

“Had to trigger a fire alarm to cover our escape,” Eliot said, keeping his voice down.  “She was right next to the siren and the flashing lights didn’t help.  She’s a little overloaded.”

Parker nodded, wordlessly confirming his story.  As Sophie went to send a transmission to her contact who would distribute the supplies they’d stolen, Parker reached into her pocket and pulled out the stone she’d been keeping in there.  It was clear like polished quartz, and at first she’d thought that’s what it was, but it also seemed to shimmer with a soft glow that was somehow both white and shifting between different colors.  Even in total darkness, it could still somehow catch light inside it.  Every time Parker held the stone and ran its sharp, jagged edges across her skin, it made her feel…whole.  Like she was being slowly warmed up from the inside out.

“Hmm?” she mumbled, looking up as she realized Eliot had just said something to her.  A couple seconds later she realized he’d asked her what she was holding.  She held up the stone to let her friend get a better look at it.  Eliot eyes narrowed for a second and Parker could feel the wheels spinning in his head.

“What?” she asked, suddenly a little anxious.

“Wait here a second,” Eliot said.  He turned and left the briefing room.  Parker shrugged.  She hadn’t exactly planned on going anywhere.  Eliot returned a moment later with Sophie following him.

“Show her,” Eliot said.  Parker held out the stone to Sophie, her anxiety and curiosity both piqued.

“That what I think it is?” Eliot asked.  He got his answer as Sophie’s eyes widened just slightly.

“Where did you get this?” Sophie asked, sitting down beside Parker.

“Stole it,” Parker said with a shrug.  “A few years ago, there was this gang of jewel thieves I ran into.  They kept everything in one safe on their ship, and…” she shrugged.  The rest of the story was obvious enough.  “The fence I took it to said it wasn’t worth anything and it just kind of felt like it _wanted_ to stay with me.”  She rushed the end of the sentence out, a little embarrassed at the phrasing.  It was a rock.  It couldn’t _want_ anything.

“Parker,” Sophie said, a smile spreading across her face, “this is a kyber crystal.”

“A what?”

“It’s a lightsaber crystal,” Sophie explained.

“Oh.”  Parker’s eyes widened as she gazed at the stone in her hand.  This whole time she’d thought it was just an ordinary rock that she’d kept because it was nice to stim with.

“Guess that explains why it wanted to stay with you,” Eliot said.  Parker looked back at him, trying to figure out if he was making fun of her.  She didn’t think he was.

“They’re not alive, are they?” she asked.

“They…almost are,” Sophie said.  She shook her head.  “It’s complicated.  I don’t really understand it.  There weren’t many people who did.”

Parker turned the stone over in her hand, letting the edges press into her skin again.  It was so strange to think that the tiny scrap of rock she’d found buried in a sub-par safe had something close to a mind of its own.

“This mean what I think it means?” she asked.

Sophie smiled.  “I think it does,” she said.

* * *

 

Over the next two weeks, Parker spent every moment of her free time focused on the weapon she was trying to build.  Sophie and Eliot both offered to help, but she declined, wanting to figure it out for herself.  She found parts for it in piles of scrap metal and rolled her eyes at her team’s comments about how of _course_ all the pieces of her lightsaber were stolen.

After two weeks of carefully scavenging for parts and figuring out how they would fit together, Parker was sitting in a corner of the briefing room, the pieces she’d collected spread out in front of her, the crystal in the center.  Nate sat on the far end of the room, sketching out the timeline for their latest job, which had to be precise down to the day.  They ignored each other, both absorbed in their own work.

Parker closed her eyes, feeling each individual scrap of metal in front of her.  The kyber crystal burned the brightest in her mind, the focal point holding the entire thing together.  She felt the metal twitching and moving on its own, scraping and twisting into place like the pins in a lock.  She opened her eyes and saw it suspended in the air in front of her.  A narrow cylinder of light gray durasteel, plain and seemingly unremarkable, the edges as sharp as the crystal inside of it.  Her lightsaber, that _she_ had built on her own.  She reached out and let it fall into her hand, its weight settling comfortably on her palm.

“You finished it.”  She jumped and looked up to see Nate watching her.  She accidentally made eye contact with him and flinched away from it.

“Think so,” she said, smiling.

“Why don’t you show Sophie?” Nate asked.  There was something weird and unfamiliar in his voice.  Out of the edge of her vision, Parker caught sight of a look on his face that helped her figure it out.  It was his proud-but-not-saying-anything-about-it look.

“Maybe I should see if it works first,” Parker said, suddenly nervous and uncertain.  What if she’d messed it up?

Nate nodded in agreement as Parker stood up.  She took a breath and braced herself, though she wasn’t sure for what.

There was a crackling _hiss_ , like a tiny explosion in her hand.  A glowing blue blade appeared, casting a soft light between her and Nate.

“I did it!” Parker said, grinning and bouncing on her toes before she remembered to deactivate her weapon.

As she ran out of the room, she could have sworn she actually saw Nate smile.


End file.
